With the impressive rise of Reddit’s r/WallStreetBets, the fame is motivating some shady dealings which hijack the message board’s name. A new Telegram crypto scam has disguised itself as a friend of r/WSB, and thieves are making off with a digital bag stuffed with users’ coins.
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Bloomberg is that has drifted around instant-messaging app Telegram. Even as the r/WSB mods have taken it upon themselves to
, many have still fallen victim to the scheme.
Telegram Crypto Scam Robs Users of Over $2 Million in Crypto Assets
So what happened? How much has this cost hopeful investors? Here’s the lowdown on the very costly Telegram crypto scam:
- Telegram features some r/WSB crossover; the scam took place through a “WallStreetBets Crypto Pumps” account.
- The user behind the scam advertised a crypto called “WSB Finance,” inviting other Telegram users to a private pre-sale of the fake crypto.
- The scammer promised thousands of WSBFINANCE in exchange for Binance Coin (CCC:BNB-USD) and Ethereum (CCC:ETH-USD).
- The phishing scam included a link to the scammer’s wallet, and succeeded in coaxing ETH and BNB from thousands of victims.
- Shortly after receiving swaths of BNB and ETH from users, the scammer came back, reporting an error with the exchange bot responsible for providing users with their new coins.
- The error had told users to send more BNB, or risk losing their entire investment.
- Shortly after this second phishing attempt, the wallet listed in the message saw 3,451 BNB removed from it. At current rates, the value of this BNB totals over $2 million.
- It is unknown how much ETH the scammer made off with in addition to the 3,451 BNB coins.
- The scammer came back shortly after withdrawing the coins from their wallets to taunt victims, leaving them with the final message: “buying lambo [sic] now.”
- The r/WSB moderators have pinned a scam alert to the top of the board for the last 15 days, stating that if users are operating outside of the r/WSB board, official Twitter, or official Discord channel, they are not using a legitimate r/WSB resource.
On the date of publication, Brenden Rearick did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article.
